Although the DSM, now in its 5th edition, has provided a standardized and reliable way of diagnosing AUD and other substance use disorders, there still remains a great amount of heterogeneity that is uncaptured and the DSM in general has not fully integrated the many advances on the neuroscience and genetics of AUD (Litten et al., 2015). Unfortunately, there is burgeoning evidence that the new AUD construct for DSM-5 has further increased the heterogeneity existing in the DSM. A recent study showed that the DSM-5 specific categories of “moderate” to “severe” AUD corresponds to what was previously captured by “alcohol dependence”; the addition of a “mild” AUD category represents a diagnostic label of unknown clinical relevance (Compton et al., 2013). Therefore, attempts have recently been made to move towards a neuroscience-based framework for addictive disorders with the goal of establishing more biological and genetically relevant domains that one day could be incorporated into a diagnostic framework (Kwako et al., 2016). In particular, a more biologically-based diagnostic framework for AUD will undoubtedly aid discovery of more effective pharmacotherapies by reducing patient
